Like this:

The past semester was a doozy, and frankly, I didn’t do much cooking worth noting. So, I am back, on an as of yet undetermined schedule for the summer.

The other day we had our homemade pizza, and it was fantastic.

The pizza is made with a really good focaccia style crust, and a spicy sauce which my mother makes. Lately, we have been using fresh mozzarella and because the basil plants are doing pretty well, fresh basil.

Well, theoretically I am back, although I still won’t be on a regular schedule for a while. However, I just had one of my most successful cooking experiments, and I had to share it.

Beef stew.

It was very simple, I took a potato, chopped it, and put it in the bottom of my slow cooker, then added a diced onion, and some stewing beef, which I spiced at this point with marjoram, paprika, salt, and a little hot sauce, because, well, I like hot sauce, as well as some spices which I had ground up into a kinda curry powder. I think it had fennel, coriander, carroway, and a little cinnamon and ginger, but I didn’t add much of this.
Now comes the interesting part, instead of just water to make the broth, I put a cup of strong, black coffee, as well as water, to make the broth richer. I learned this trick from a recipe my mother gave me for Idaho Beef Stew. I will make a recipe for that when I have all the ingredients to try it.

So, I just left this all in the crock pot for around eight hours, and it came out with a rich, flavorful broth, which the potatoes absorbed, becoming delicious, and beef so tender it was falling apart.